The surgical treatment of spinal disc disorder can be generally attained by several methods, which include the hypodermic injection of medicine, the balloon-insertion of medicine, and the filler-insertion of medicine. For example, the U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,976,186, 6,508,839, and 6,602,291 disclose respectively methods for treating disorders of the spinal disc, such as placement of a prosthetic device or reconstruction of the damaged structure of the disc. These methods are defective in design in that disc disruption is required for placement of the therapeutic implant. The placement of a therapeutic implant by controlled delivery of a flowable material requiring minimal disruption of the disc is desirable. Without controlled delivery, the medicine is not contained and there is the possibility of injury to the surrounding tissues.
In order to prevent the drawbacks of the methods described above, the filler-insertion method is used to implant material in the spinal disc in such a way that the material is contained in the spinal disc, and that the material only remains implanted in the spinal disc.